As a physician and epidemiologist, Teri Manolio, M.D., Ph.D. has a deep interest in discovering genetic changes associated with diseases by conducting biomedical research on large groups of people. As the Director of the Division of Genomic Medicine, Dr. Manolio leads efforts to support research translating those discoveries into diagnoses, preventive measures, treatments and prognoses of health conditions.

"I see our division as a unique undertaking at NHGRI. We apply the rapidly expanding knowledge base of genetic associations and genome-scale analytic technologies to clinical problems of disease diagnosis and treatment" said Dr. Manolio. "This knowledge will enable us to meld clinical and genomic research for rapid improvements in clinical care."

Dr. Manolio envisions a day when patients have ready access to affordable, reliable genetic tests enabling them to avoid rare, sometimes devastating complications of common drug treatments. She also hopes to find ways of using a patient's genomic information to enhance diagnostic strategies and improve treatment outcomes by examining comprehensive databases of patients whose physical characteristics and genomic variants match those of the patient at hand.

Dr. Manolio came to NHGRI from NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute where she was involved in large-scale cohort studies such as the Cardiovascular Health Study and the Framingham Heart Study. Dr. Manolio also maintains an active clinical appointment on the in-patient medical service of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, and is a Professor of medicine on the faculty of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. She has authored more than 270 research papers and has research interests in genome-wide association studies of complex diseases, ethnic differences in disease risk and incorporating genomic findings into clinical care.

She received her B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Maryland College Park, her M.D. from the University of Maryland at Baltimore, and her Ph.D. in human genetics and genetic epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.